The Well by Christopher Woods
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| Image | Christopher Woods |
The Well
Forget, for the moment, the women who gather there talking, waiting to fill pitchers. And forget for now the dirty faced children who twist their mothers’ skirts, who spit at one another, and who toss laughter like small clouds into the air. Forget all that.
What matters now is this one man, bent and nameless, who has slowed there, so close to the well. For him, now, even walking has become a curse. What he thinks about as he walks is the agony that, until now, he has tried to resist. Breathing deeply, he swallows one child’s laugh, then another.
Slowly he circles the well, feels it pulling him into its bosom. Nearby, on benches, are other old men. Maybe they have been there forever. He remembers running past them when he was still a child.
He never had time to stop, to talk to them. Or as a man in middle age, passing but not really seeing them. And later his own hair and beard white, he had looked away rather than think about them. He would have no part of it.
Until now. He circles until he finds a place to sit. He is lucky. The bench is still warm from someone else. He wonders whose place he has taken, and where they have gone. For a few minutes? Forever? And he wonders how long he will remain there, within the pull of the well, the lure of its depth.
Maybe, he thinks, it won’t be so bad. Feeding on the circular darkness that grows out of the earth. Watching children passing. The older men who look away. Even the tired old men who stand so near to the well, all of them waiting patiently for a seat.
© Christopher Wood
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| Christopher Woods |
A powerful piece!
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